Dulwich Hamlet are a non-league football club with 125 years of history and attendance figures to put some professional sides to shame.

They have one of the most impressive managers outside the Football League in Gavin Rose and a squad full of exciting, young footballers many of whom have been discovered thanks to a well-maintained network of local community connections and their own academy set up, A.S.P.I.R.E.

Yet despite this they face an uncertain future after property developers Meadow, the current owners of their home of Champion Hill, withdrew permission for the club to continue to play at the ground, located on the same site they have been using for 106 years, and issued them with a £121,000 bill.

Their landlords also instructed Blake Morgan, a commercial law firm, to send legal letters laying claim to trademarks complete with threats of further action if Dulwich Hamlet continue to operate under their own name.

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Meadow are now embroiled in a bitter battle with the club and Southwark Council over use of the site and the team must find a new venue for the rest of a season - a season that has seen them claim to the top of the Isthmian Premier Division and could yet deliver promotion to the National League South, two steps away from entry into League Two.

With events moving at a bewildering pace, it has been difficult to keep track of the situation. Social media has been alive with a campaign to #SaveDHFC, as fans and politicians alike have rallied to get behind the club. There will be a hearing in the House of Commons on Friday March 16 to discuss what is going on at Champion Hill.

Fans at Champion Hill. (Image: Aaron Flanagan)

So what is really going on at Dulwich Hamlet, why does this club matter so much to London’s football tapestry and, most importantly, what can you do to help?

The story so far

Back in February 2014, Dulwich were facing financial difficulties and were minutes away from going out of business. An unpaid utility bill - that even saw the gas temporarily switched off at Champion Hill - resulted in the ground switching hands.

In March, property developers Meadow Partners purchased Champion Hill for £5.7million, with the intention of building housing on the site. Meadow’s plans also included a proposal to build a new football ground for Dulwich on the nearby Green Dale site.

However, when those plans were unveiled in 2016 they did not include enough affordable housing to meet Southwark Council’s 35% target for a new development.

As reported by the Independent, Meadow’s proposal was just 16% affordable housing - 10 shared ownership flats and 15 affordable flats out of 155 in total. The Green Dale site was also problematic as it is technically Metropolitan Open Land, the highest form of protected land in London.

As a result, Meadow dropped its financial support for the club, which it said was running a loss of £170,000 a year. The relationship between the two parties soured very quickly as fans rallied to cover the costs of player and staff wages. A fund raising group called The 12th Man was mobilised to raise funds quickly to maintain Dulwich’s title-challenging squad.

Matters came to a head when Meadow terminated the license to let Dulwich play at Champion Hill and issued them with £121,000 bill for back rent. They also warned the club they had registered ‘Dulwich Hamlet Football Club’ as a trademark and warned them off using their own name - a stance they retracted in a new statement, pleading to the Council to let them pursue plans for their development.

As things stand, the club will not play its next home fixture at Champion Hill. Club representatives went to Westminster on Tuesday to meet MPs and Lords, lobbying their support for the cause.

Sadiq Khan and Southwark Council Leader Peter John issued a joint statement urging Meadow to walk away and sell the ground to the Council at a fair valuation, to put it back into "safe hands". A £10 million bid from Rio Ferdinand’s affordable housing company Legacy Foundation was rejected by Meadow in December.

Dulwich are already exploring three stadiums as potential ground share options as a temporary solution after being kicked out of Champion Hill.

Why do Dulwich Hamlet matter?

With football clubs up and down the country – from Millwall to Blackpool – suffering their fair share of ownership problems, many fans may be asking, why should they care about Dulwich Hamlet? Simply put, Dulwich are one of the most significant and popular non-league clubs in London, if not the UK.

Founded in 1893, Dulwich established themselves in the early 20th Century as a well-respected amateur side. Playing in a distinctive pink and blue kit, the club accrued a number of interesting accolades in their history. In 1911, they fielded Hussein Hegazi, the first African player in English football. They toured the Netherlands in 1913, beating Ajax 4-1 in the process.

The inter-war years were Hamlet’s heyday. They regularly attracted crowds of around 15,000 and famously won the Isthmian League and FA Amateur Cup double in 1919/20. The star of that team was Edgar Kail, the last amateur player to represent England at full international level.

Fast forward to the early 2010s, and Dulwich have come to represent something else – a backlash against the extortionate prices of professional football and a meeting place for community action and social causes.

Crowds have boomed and Dulwich boast attendances that some Football League clubs would envy, with gates frequently exceeding 2,000 people.

Dulwich are no ordinary football club. They have an actively anti-homophobic stance, becoming one of the first non-league clubs to support the Rainbow Laces campaign in 2015 and playing Stonewall FC in a friendly.

There have been regular food bank drives and a fan-organised Dulwich2Dunkirk initiative to raise funds and supplies for refugee camps in France. Last October, Dulwich agreed to donate money from its League’s betting deal with Betting.net to charity.

On the pitch, the club have played a big part in developing young local players and allowing them to realise their dreams at a higher level. Former England Internationals Ian Wright and Peter Crouch both had brief spells at Champion Hill but it is the more recent generation who really owe Dulwich for a leg-up in their careers.

At the time of writing attacking midfielder Erhun Oztumer has 16 goals for Walsall this season but was given a second chance by Dulwich to put himself in the shop window of professional clubs. Ethan Pinnock rose through the ranks at the club and recently signed for Barnsley, where he is now part of the first team.

Fledgling striker Shawn McCoulsky came through the academy at Dulwich and scored the goal for Newport County that knocked Leeds out of the FA Cup back in January.

Dulwich ought to be celebrating their 125th anniversary later this year, with plans already made for a summer trip to Hamburg where they will play a friendly against sister club Altona 93. However, festivities for their century and a quarter existence have been put on the back-burner with the present outlook so bleak.

The Dulwich Hamlet Supporters Trust are also working hard in their continued support to secure the club’s future and issued a statement on Wednesday on Meadow’s recent actions.

A fan group called Save Dulwich Hamlet has also been established to organise fan action and put pressure on Meadow to relinquish the ground. Keep up to date with the latest plans on Facebook or Twitter.

The group advises fans to write to their representatives - local councillors, London Assembly members and MPs - to inform them of the situation. Details of all these can be found on the website Write To Them.

A Day of Action has also been planned for Saturday 17th March. Fans will congregate in Goose Green, East Dulwich at 12:30pm for a rally and a march to Champion Hill for the game against Worthing (assuming it goes ahead there).

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